Believe It or Not

One by one the neighborhood songbirds visited
and stripped us of our brightest threads of pain

carrying them off for purposes that we couldn’t
quite fathom. So we got a dog, felt a little better.

There were days, of course, we were grateful to be
rid of this pain, and still others we were jealous

of it—why did something so cruel get to enjoy
the gossamer of flight? Why not us instead, lifted

by those talons, streaming like flags through the air?
Why not us? This thought hurt, though soon the birds.

returned to carry even that away. When they were
finished, they took the dog, hair by hair and then all

at once, along with the part of us that missed the dog.
Along with the part that even remembered his name.